“M’am, I’m not a door man, I’m a dancer.”
So, Carnality Ball is the big news du jour. It happened last night and was ridiculously awesome. I guess I’ll give you the line by line?
I got there at 8 (right when it was supposed to open) so that Nicole Moan could tie me into my corset (which I bought about a week ago). Because no night is complete without me doing something ridiculously stupid, I locked my keys into my car and therefore left my money in there too. I had the good sense to bring my ticket with me, though, and Billy had a spare set at his apartment only a few miles away. I did, however, get to hang around carnality without my money or phone for about 2 hours waiting for him to show up with Andrea and Chris while Rebekah and I struggled to get my corset onto me right and talked with a porn star among others.
I managed to miss the dance performance by OU’s modern dance company, but caught Perpetual Motion’s arial stuff. I thought it was really interesting to watch, lots of incredible acrobatics, but not really my bag as far as dance goes. I also saw Pseudodance’s performance. They went up twice, once at the very beginning to be painted while dancing. They were airbrushed by Nicole Moan’s father. Apparently after this performance Leila was tipped 5 dollars by a random woman, thus inspiring the vicarious bit of esprit d’escalier of the title of this post. Their second performance was absolutely incredible. They did essentially 2 married pieces, and one other right after. It was a very interesting take on bondage as a form of looking for connections (I think).
The fascinating thing about Pseudodance/Kabaret Falschtanz is the way in which they regard sexuality. At their Kabaret shows, they make fun of it, they get hurt by it, they engage in it. They confront sexuality head on. At their Modern shows, they engage sexuality in such an incredibly raw way, so bare in their portrayal of human nature. In their song set they were being tied to things and each other and blindfolded, stranded away from the other dancers, and they would reach out in the most mournful way, when they would finally receive touch it was only with this look of deep sorrow on their face. Leila and Lynna did the most heartbreaking piece I’ve ever watched atop a spinning platform, just wrapped up in eachother and making the subtlest expressions and movements, turning, turning, turning, needing, needing, needing, but seemingly never getting quite what they are looking for.
I was absolutely stunned by their work. I always am, though. In their set Leila cut her foot and danced through it. That was pretty hardcore on her part.
At some point, there was a whipping demonstration on stage which I watched for about 5 minutes before getting inexplicably uncomfortable with the situation. I’m not entirely certain… regardless, about half an hour later they were demonstrating on willing audience members and I played mistress while my leashed Andrea got beaten. It was quite the event.
Somewhere in all of this mess I bought myself $20 worth of raffle tickets for a gift basket that included a ceramic corset by Nicole Moan, a bunch of movies, some buttons, a bunch of condoms, and some sex toys. I had to stay until 2 am to find out if I had won the drawing (oh my goodness exhausted) and actually did! I now am the proud owner of one green flame corset, and one lovely purple one. Fantastic.
It was a long night, but was terrific. I got hit on by dozens of boys and ending up claiming anyone I knew around me as my significant other. I got called beautiful more times than I could count. I did the makeup of several people, got some dressed, did some hair, and we all looked stunning. I got to watch a lot of what turned out to be less "sexy" in a conventional sense and more "philosophical" in the sense that every part of show forced me to really consider what sex meant to me, what sexy was to me. That and it was all good fun.